The Commonwealth Jubilee play competition was a 1951 Australian play competition held to celebrate Australia's Jubilee Year.
[1][2] The competition encouraged Australian playwriting at a time when few Australian plays were presented on stage and were thus generally unprofitable for playwrights, with The Bulletin lamenting that "the nation's literary energy...has gone where it can find a market: into the novel and short story".
[2] The judges were Professor Keith Macartney of Melbourne University, Lindsey Browne, a The Sydney Morning Herald drama critic, and Frank Harvey, senior drama producer for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
[1] A year after the competition, none of the plays had been picked up by commercial theatre groups.
Though the Sub-Committee's efforts were unsuccessful, two of the awarded plays—George Farwell's and John Sandford's—were adapted for ABC Radio.